The present invention relates to a safety helmet, in particular for motorcycling use, of the type comprising a visor hinged on the cap, to the sides of the front opening of the helmet, and a shielding element for protection from light rays or other atmospheric agents, such as for example rain, which is also hinged on the cap and movable with respect to the cap and the visor to enable alternatively its use or nonuse by a user according to the different environmental conditions that may be encountered when driving (daylight, darkness, tunnels, etc.).
It forms part of the known art to equip safety helmets for motorcyclists, as well as with the customary transparent visor, with a shielding element for protection against light rays which, constrained to the cap or to the visor, can be set so as to protect the user's eyes, in the case where the light rays disturb vision, or else can be set so as not to interfere with the field of vision of the user himself, should the luminosity be limited. Such a shielding element usually consists of an additional visor equipped with a transparent region with limited transmittance of light radiation, for example consisting of a filter for sunlight.
The Italian patent IT1.177.250, filed in the name of BMW, teaches making a safety helmet comprising a transparent visor, pivoted to the cap and designed to intercept the front opening of the helmet, and an anti-dazzle shielding element, which is also constrained to the cap of the helmet and set underneath the transparent visor. The shielding element, in particular, can be displaced between an operative position, in which the shielding element interferes at least partially with the front opening of the helmet, and an inoperative position, in which the shielding element is housed within a recess made on the cap itself, in such a way as not to interfere with the aforesaid front opening.
In this embodiment, as in other similar embodiments known to the art, the internal shielding element and the external transparent visor are actuated in a substantially separate way, so that rotation of the external visor does not affect the position reached by the shielding element, and vice versa. It may consequently occur that in conditions of sudden reduction of visibility, due also to accidental situations that could arise when travelling (such as, for example, the sudden formation of dirt on the top visor), the user instinctively opens the external visor, seeking to obtain a greater visibility, but in so doing the shielding element, which is independent of the main visor, will remain in the same position and will consequently prevent restoration of maximum visibility.
The European patent ER-A-0590255, filed in the name of the present applicant, describes a safety helmet for motorcycling use, in which an additional visor with low transmittance (i.e., designed to shield from light rays) is pivoted to the cap of the helmet underneath on external visor with high transmittance. Both of the visors are movable between a position of interception (either total or partial) of the front opening of the helmet, and a raised position, with respect to the front opening, in which both of the visors are housed in a seat provided inside the cap. The internal visor envisages an end-of-travel arrest for the top end of the external visor that enables fixed rotation of the two visors only when the latter are arranged in a given relative position.
Consequently, the two coupled visors are free to be displaced, at least in one direction of rotation, independently of one another, and hence they independently reach positions that, during use, can prove far from readily accessible or inconvenient to actuate by the user.
Thus, for example, in the set of visors described above, the raising of the external visor causes raising, in a position sensibly set back with respect to the front opening at the helmet., of the internal visor on the cap, whilst the subsequent actuation of the external visor engaged with the front opening of the helmet, for example thanks to a lead-in portion set in a position corresponding to the bottom area (closer to the front opening and readily accessible for the user) of the external visor, does not affect the retracted position reached by the internal visor with respect to the cap. This implies that the subsequent possible lowering of the internal visor, so that this intercepts the front opening of the helmet, prove considerably inconvenient for the user, who must identify and rotate the grip, or perform another actuation, of the internal visor set in a retracted position on the cap.
In addition, when both of the visors are arranged so as to intercept the front opening of the helmet, the raising of the internal visor, until it has reached its end-of-travel position, is not correlated mechanically to the raising of the external visor, and hence, when the user decides to raise the two visors from the front opening of the helmet, an erroneous actuation of just the internal shielding visor implies the necessary and inconvenient repetition of the action of raising directed, in this case, at the external visor.
The European patent application EP-A-1323361, filed in the name of HELM INTERNATIONAL, relates to a safety helmet equipped with an internal visor for shielding from sunlight and an external transparent visor, altogether similar to the helmet described in the patent EP-A-0590255, in which the two visors, in their raised position, are arranged above the outer surface of the cap. The helmet proposed by HELM INTERNATIONAL envisages means for limiting the travel of the two visors with respect to the cap, according to a predefined angle for each visor.
The British patent application GB-A-2052244, filed in the name of ROMER teaches providing a shielding element, or shielding visor, outside the transparent visor for interception of the front opening of the helmet. The relative motion between the two visors is adjusted by their geometrical and spatial conformation, there not being provided specific means for rendering rotation of the two visors fixed even in a given reciprocal position. The ROMER helmet envisages means for limiting the angle of rotation of the two visors with respect to the cap.
Both of the patents EP-A-1323361 and GB-A-2052244 present the same drawbacks described in relation to the European patent application EP-A-0590255.
Finally, in the case of the set of visors described in the ROMER patent, resting (not regulated by appropriate stops) of the bottom edge of the top shielding visor on the outer surface of the bottom transparent visor, can cause scratching or cracking of the latter.
Likewise known to the art is providing safety helmets for motorcyclists equipped with a flap connected to the cap and set in a position corresponding to the top edge of the front opening of the helmet. The flap, which extends above the transparent visor for interception of the front opening, is usually fixed with respect to the cap itself and has the function of sheltering the user from sunlight or from atmospheric agents, such as for example rain.
The French patent application FR2.501.478, filed in the name of Monin, teaches fixing a protective flap in an irremovable way above the front opening of the helmet and associating, in a rotatable way, a transparent visor to the protective flap. The absence of a rotatable visor constrained to the cap and the impossibility of removing, or at least, moving the protective flap away from the front opening renders the use of the helmet extremely inconvenient and far from functional. The European patent application EP-A-0479407, filed in the name of Shoei, describes a helmet equipped with a removable protective flap, constrained to the cap, set on top of a visor connected in a rotatable way to the cap itself.
The presence of a flap fixed to the cap that is placed on top of the visor of the helmet, in addition to causing a certain complexity of construction of the helmet itself, renders actuation of the visor by the user inconvenient, which can in fact be hindered by the flap.
In both of the cases referred to above, it happens moreover that the effectiveness of the shading from sunlight offered by the fixed flap is satisfactory only in certain conditions of exposure or at certain hours of the day and then becomes partially or to tally unsatisfactory at other moments or in other situations and forces the user to assume positions of his head aimed to seek the desired shade; in the case, moreover, of rays reflected by objects in the horizontal plane of travelling, shading is then totally absent.